Session 4: Thurs May 8 LongGreenHouse 5 Chapel Rd 3:30-5:30 pm.

Apple Tree guilds. sheet mulching orchards & fruit trees & shrubs

Bring garden gloves, notebook, potluck food, questions and suggestions.

We’ll come up with some plant guilds for LongGreenHouse and for your own gardens.

Members of LongGreenHouse will participate in UMaine’s Earth Day Eco-Charette Organized by Emily Markides and Richard Graves. Also, New Media students from my classes will be attending and contributing to the communication aspects of getting this green dorm vision off the ground (and into the ground–in gardens)!

Featured speakers include Jim Merkel, Author of Radical Simplicity  as well as Emily Markides, Richard Graves. Teams of over a hundred students will help design a green retrofit of York Village dorm, gardens, greenhouse, water cycling, food corridors, and dynamic communities based on green living as a project as well as curriculum.

LomgGreenHouse will offer support, as well as forming one apex of the “green triangle” growing at the south edge of campus, and is currently working with Scott Wilkerson of Stormwater management at UMaine to produce a “living machine” curriculum/project directing stormwater through a rootzone, pond and clean water stream from university run off. 

 

Session 3: Thurs April 17 LongGreenHouse 5 Chapel Rd 3:30-5:30 pm.

 

Plant Guilds, and Companion Planting

Bring garden gloves, notebook, potluck food, questions and suggestions.

We’ll come up with some plant guilds for LongGreenHouse and for your own gardens.

 

Spring Workshops continue

Session 2: Thurs April 3
LongGreenHouse
5 Chapel Rd
3:30-5:30 pm.

Plant Guilds, and Companion Planting, Apple tree pruning or Coldframe seeding

Bring garden gloves, notebook, potluck food, questions and suggestions.

We’ll come up with some plant guilds for LongGreenHouse and for your own gardens.

This week’s Potluck will be held Tues (instead of Thursday) to accommodate special guests Craig Dietrich and Vanessa Vobis, whose works in Intermedia are changing the terms of art-making and programming. Join us for:

Beyond Copyright and Copyleft
4-6pm
5 Chapel Road
Potluck at LongGreenHouse
Craig Dietrich talks about the Mukurtu Archive he helped to design for the Warumungu people of Australia and the balance it strikes between providing access while preserving cultural norms of privacy and sacred knowledge. The demo of this innovative software serves as a point of departure for a conversation about the connections between indigenous and electronic networks, as well as the role of local determination in an age of global politics.

Other participants include elders from the Penobscot, Mi’kmaq, and Wampanoag communities and New Media faculty and students.

LongGreenHouse launches its Spring Permaculture Series with a Seed Sowing Workshop Thursday, March 20.

Wassookeag children, UMaine students and community members will sow seeds and prepare a Four-Season unheated greenhouse, built by the Fall 07 Permaculture students, for spring planting.

We will also prepare and seed the cold frame, and indoor flats. During this time we’ll review some basic permaculture gardening tips and techniques including:

-plant guilds, patches, cold frames & swales
-pollinators & pest control
-soil block making & potting soil mixes
-sheet mulching, manuring & compost teas

We also hope to be viewing Vasia Markides’ new film, “Hidden in the Sand” which screened at Space Other Gallery
in Boston’s South End, on Friday, March 7th, 2008.

Workshops will be held roughly every two weeks through the spring semester: Mar 20, Ap 3, Ap 17, May 8.

LongGreenHouse is hosting Thursday potluck dinners for members of the neighborhood and community interested in the intersection between permaculture and Indigenous culture, and/or how these combine in the Longhouse model practiced by Wassookeag families.

We meet from about 4-6 pm at 5 Chapel Road, Orono (ie LongGreetHouse) to enjoy good company, make music or conversation, play, plan, laugh and console.

For more information you can contact Miigam’agan or Debbie Bell-Smith

Tentative Spring Workshop Schedule:

• Thurs Mar 20 Plant mid seedlings & seed coldfame;
  build stone heated cold-frames
  radish, arugula, spinach, mache
• Thurs April 3
  Plant guilds, apple tree pruning
• Thurs April 17 (depending on snow melt)
  Plant swales & wildflowers & round 2 in greenhouse-spring crops;
  herbs seedlings
• Thurs May 8
  Plant outdoor seeds & hot weather crops in greenhouse
  build herb spiral
• Thurs June 5
  Outdoor hot weather crops, crop rotations, re-seed greens & early crops.

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On thursday, Jan 24, Wassookeag children and family surprised gkisedtanamoogk with a birthday party. Earlier in the week, each child engaged gkisedtanamoogk in conversation designed to discover his likes, passions, and preferences. Then they conspired to gather as many as they could to celebrate with him. Learning about his avowed love of fire, native beads, music, ice cream cake, and good company, they crafted their ceremony. Ryan designed and made him a bead necklace; Kai designed the fire show with tea lights strewn about the house, Sgoaganill, Goptjaoetj, Otjoson brought his favorite ice cream cake. John Piccone and Miigam’agan taught us a Mi’kmaq song with guitar accompaniment, and adults brought food.

Click on the image below to view design plans for LongGreenHouse created by the UMaine Fall 07 Permaculture class, taught by Emily Markides, Julia & Charles Yelton and Joline Blais.

Videos of Permacuture workshop Fall 07

VIDEO #1 : Greenhouse, Swales, Wassookeag Children
Overall view of the permaculture workshop

VIDEO #2 : 60s Greenhouse
Raising the greenhouse

VIDEO #1 : 60s Swales
Forming the swales